Spearfishing Stats

Taxonomy

Rarity

Striped mullet are one of the most abundant fish in southern California bays, and they are also one of the easiest to notice, because they spend part of their day in the air. A school will leave the surface one fish at a time in the back reaches of a harbor on a calm morning, which is why anyone who has walked a bay shoreline in San Diego or Orange County has seen them without necessarily knowing what they were. The IUCN lists the species as Least Concern, assessed in 2022. That status covers a fish found in coastal water almost everywhere on Earth between 62 degrees north and 57 degrees south, which makes it one of the most widely distributed fish in the Ichthyopedia. In California the abundance is regional. Mullet are a southern California animal, common in bays, harbors and along sandy shore from Santa Barbara south, and scarce past Point Conception, Santa Barbara. Records reach as far north as San Francisco Bay, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife published a note documenting the first record in Humboldt Bay, which is a good measure of how unusual the fish is up there.

Regulations

CDFW rules verified 2026-09-06

Seasonality

Edibility

Location

Mullet live where fresh water meets salt. Adults handle a range of salinity from pure fresh water to 75 parts per thousand, roughly twice as salty as the open ocean, and that tolerance is the reason the species turns up in places no other California sport fish can use. In this state they hold in coastal bays and estuaries along the southern coast, in the lower Colorado River, and in the Salton Sea, where they were introduced in 1950. Juveniles gain the full salinity tolerance only after they reach about 2 inches. Depth is not much of a factor. The species has been recorded to about 390 feet, but the fish spend their time between the surface and about 30 feet, in schools over sand and mud and around beds of vegetation. In California that means back-bay channels, the sand flats inside harbor mouths, eelgrass edges, and the trough along an open sand beach.

The movement worth knowing is the spawning run. Mullet are catadromous, which means they live in fresh and brackish water and go to sea to breed, the reverse of a salmon. In autumn and winter adults leave the estuaries in large groups and travel well offshore into deep water to spawn. The published figures put the run 40 to 50 miles out, into water more than 3,200 feet deep, and they come from Gulf of Mexico populations. No published California season exists, so the timing of the run on this coast is not something the science currently answers.

Spearfishing Brief

Finding mullet is the easy half. Schools hold near the surface over open sand and mud, the fish advertise themselves by jumping, and a diver in a southern California bay usually knows where they are before getting in the water. The complication is the water itself. Bay and estuary water carries suspended sediment most of the year, so a school that is obvious from the seawall can be a set of moving shapes at 8 feet once a diver is under. Find difficulty rates a 2 on that basis, not because the fish hide.

The shot is where mullet earn their reputation, and it rates a 4. Every source that describes the species describes the same thing, which is a fish that will not tolerate being approached. Anglers call them very hard to catch and point to a diet of detritus and algae that keeps them off most baits, a soft mouth that holds a hook poorly, and wariness that ends the attempt before it starts. Divers hunting the closely related grey mullet in Europe report the same behavior in the water, where the slightest movement sends the school away, and where one mistake spooks every fish at once rather than the one being aimed at. Mullet also hold no structure. There is no ledge to hide behind and no hole to pin a fish against, just open sand and a school that keeps its distance. The 2 approaches that European divers describe both give up on stalking. One is to snorkel the shallows on a high tide, when the fish push into inches of water to feed and a diver on the surface can close the distance in a way a diver below cannot. The other is to lie still at 6 to 10 feet and let the school pass, keeping the sun behind and moving as little as possible. Neither is a chase.

The shot comes at close range at a fish that is already moving, so a short gun is the right tool. Divers on grey mullet use about 75 cm with a single 16 mm band and a 6.5 mm shaft, sized for how fast it swings rather than how far it shoots, often with a closed muzzle so a second shot can be loaded quickly. A pole spear covers the same distance if the ambush is set well. One caveat belongs on all of this: no California spearfishing account for striped mullet was found. Everything above comes either from documented behavior of this species or from divers hunting a relative on another continent. A diver who takes mullet regularly in San Diego Bay knows more about it than the published record does.

One legal detail applies specifically to this fish. Mullet gather at creek and river mouths, and California prohibits possessing or using a spear within 100 yards of the mouth of any stream in ocean waters north of Ventura County. Local harbor and city rules are separate from state rules and can close bay water to spearfishing entirely. The state also does not allow mullet to be taken with the cast net that dominates the fishery in the Gulf South. Dip nets and throw nets in California are limited to a short list of species that does not include mullet, which leaves hook and line, difficult as it is, and the spear.

On the table, mullet split opinion, and the split is worth reporting rather than resolving. Along the Gulf Coast the fish is a staple with a nickname, smoked and fried and treated as a regional food, and cooks there describe high oil content, firm flesh, and a clean, rich flavor that needs little seasoning. The California angling account is cooler, calling the flesh mild, small-flaked and soft. Both sides agree on 2 points. The meat is darker and denser than a white-fleshed reef fish, with a heavy dark muscle band along the side that most people trim, and the quality depends on the water. Mullet feed by sucking sediment off the bottom, so a fish from clean, salty, sandy water tastes better than a fish from a stagnant channel, and fish from polluted water should be left alone. Bleeding the fish, cleaning it well and getting it on ice quickly is the difference between the 2 descriptions more often than the fish is. The roe is the other half of the value. Salted and pressed mullet roe sells for over 100 dollars a pound in some markets, and the fish carry it heaviest during the autumn and winter spawn.

Deep Dive

The striped mullet eats mud. That is the fact that explains most of the rest of the animal, including why it is so hard to catch on a hook and why its insides look like nothing else a California diver brings home. Adults feed during the day by putting their mouths against the bottom and sucking up the top layer of sediment, straining out the microscopic algae and dead organic matter, which biologists call detritus. Sand grains come up with every mouthful, and the fish uses them. Mullet have thick-walled, gizzard-like sections in the stomach, the same grinding arrangement a chicken uses, and the sand acts as the grit. Behind that sits an unusually long gut, because plant and detritus material takes a long time to break down. A fish built this way has no interest in a shrimp on a hook, which is why anglers who catch them do it with dough balls made from oatmeal, with moss, or with frozen peas. Larvae start out differently. For the first weeks of life they eat small crustaceans including copepods, plus mosquito larvae, and they only switch to the bottom-feeding habit as they grow.

Then there is the jumping. Mullet leap more than any other fish in a California bay, and after more than 40 years of research nobody has closed the question. There are 3 explanations on the table: escaping a predator, shaking loose parasites, and getting air. The air explanation has the most behind it. In 1985 H. D. Hoese published what he called the internal diving bell hypothesis, proposing that a mullet leaps in order to fill an organ at the back of its throat with air, which then lets the fish stay active in oxygen-poor water for about 5 minutes. It rests on 2 lines of evidence. Jumping becomes more frequent as the oxygen in the water drops, and it happens mostly in daylight, which is when the fish are down in the bottom sediment where oxygen is lowest. Observers who watch closely say the 2 kinds of jump look different. Several fish leaving the water together, staying upright and entering cleanly, is usually a predator. A single fish making a slower, shorter leap and flopping over sideways or backwards is usually taking air. The parasite explanation has its own basis: mullet carry an extraordinary load, and one study that examined 300 fish found parasites in every single one, including flatworms, roundworms and small parasitic crustaceans. None of the 3 explanations has been ruled out, and all 3 may be true at different moments.

The spawning strategy is the opposite of a salmon's. Salmon feed at sea and breed in fresh water. Mullet feed in fresh and brackish water and breed at sea, a pattern called catadromy. Adults reach maturity at about 3 years and around 8 to 12 inches, and once mature they join the autumn and winter migration offshore. A female releases somewhere between 500,000 and 2.6 million eggs depending on which study is counting, each about 0.7 millimeters across, transparent and buoyant. They hatch in roughly 2 days. The young then have to find their way back to an estuary, which is the part of the life cycle that ties the species to bays and makes it vulnerable to what happens in them.

Up close, mullet are easy to identify once a diver knows what to look for. The body carries dark stripes that are not stripes at all but rows of spots, one at the center of each scale, lining up into what looks like a continuous line. Fish under 6 inches have not developed them yet. There is a large dark blotch at the base of each pectoral fin, the paired fin just behind the gill cover. The strangest feature is the eye. Adult mullet grow a clear fatty covering over most of the eyeball, called an adipose eyelid, which is well developed by the time a fish is 2 inches long and gives the eye a glassy, half-covered look. Adults commonly reach about 20 inches and can grow past 3 feet, though published maximum weights disagree enough that no single number is worth quoting.

Mullet matter more as food for other animals than as food for people, at least in California. Documented predators include sharks, dolphins, pelicans and larger predatory fish, and the schools are a standing food supply in every bay they occupy. The species is also one of the most heavily farmed fish in the world and supports commercial fisheries on several continents, sold fresh, dried, salted and frozen, with the roe as the high-value product. California has never had much of a mullet fishery, partly because the state does not allow the cast net that the rest of the country uses on them. What the fish gets here instead is a role as one of the most visible animals in the bays, doing something no other local fish does, for reasons that are still being argued about.

One last piece of biology connects this fish to 2 others in the Ichthyopedia. Jacksmelt and topsmelt carry the word smelt in their names but are not true smelt. Their nearest relatives are the mullet and the barracuda. A jacksmelt in a harbor and a mullet in the same harbor are closer kin to each other than either is to the small silver fish the name suggests.

Where to Find Them

Beaches whose habitats match this species

Matched by habitat: a beach is listed when its biome tags overlap this species' biomes.